by Holly Lisle
"You're dead," he croaked.
"Apparently not. Would you let me in? It's freezing out here." Her breath swirled around her in frosted clouds. She rubbed her arms with her hands and stamped her feet, and when he looked at her he could see that her skin was nubby with gooseflesh.
He unlocked the doors with fingers that almost wouldn't obey him, and pulled them open, and she hurried in and rushed to the fireplace. "God, it's awful to be stuck outside in this weather with no clothes. I hope I don't get frostbite."
"You're alive," he said.
She was turning in front of the fire, rubbing her arms still, shivering. "Much to my surprise."
He pulled one of his dressing gowns from its hook on the wall and hurried to her side and draped the gown around her.
"You're alive," he said again.
She pulled the robe tight and cinched it into place with the belt. And then she looked up at him and said, "I promised you I'd come back. I promised you that I wouldn't leave you alone. That I wouldn't let the veyâr die. So here I am."
He nodded. "You didn't die. Yaner told me you were dead. Everyone thought you were dead."
She rested a hand on his arm and looked into his eyes, and a chill ran through him. "I was dead," she said. "I came back. I'm here to be with you, to help the veyâr, to carry out my parents' plan. But I was dead. I came back. The necklace—well, let's just say I found out where all those nightmares I had of my predecessors came from. The necklace doesn't actually keep us from dying—it simply brings us back afterward. And that's a problem."
He pulled his arm away from her, shivering in spite of his wish to appear brave. "A problem?"
"Using magic to bring people back from the dead is bad. Very bad. What comes back is never the same as what was there before. I'm Molly—but, Seo…this necklace I'm wearing can never come off. Never. Because if it came off, I don't think I'd be Molly anymore."
He nodded. He could not think of a single word to say.
"But I am Molly. Right now, right here, I'm the Molly you know. The veyâr are safe. I'll stand between you and the Old Gods. And I love you, Seo. I love you."
She wrapped her arms around him, and held him tight, and he wrapped her in his embrace. She was right. He had his world back. His people. His future. His love.
But he thought of the fact that she had been dead, and was alive again. About the fact that she said coming back from the dead was bad—that if she removed the necklace, she would be someone (or perhaps something) else. He considered that she was the only woman he had ever loved, and she had cheated death to return to him.
And for the life of him, he could not think of a single word to say.
Author's Endnote
I've never done an endnote before, but this book—or at least the existence of the little town of Cat Creek—calls for some explanation. Initially, you see, I'd placed the story in Gibson, North Carolina, a tiny and absolutely charming town where I had the good fortune to live and spend time for a number of years. It was the perfect setting for this tale, and I made happy use of buildings, streets, people, and other things that stuck out in my memory. I couldn't figure out a way to work in either the Firehouse Restaurant, where I painted the sign over the door and played guitar for unsuspecting diners, or the cool old train station, but I still have books to write in this universe, so I'll keep looking in the next one.
However, once the body count started rising and I realized how very many people I was going to kill off, I suddenly couldn't leave the book set in Gibson anymore. I like the place, you see, and the folks who live there certainly wouldn't get that impression if I wiped out half the town's inhabitants in the blink of an eye.
So I created Cat Creek. It's situated exactly where Gibson is. Has many of the same streets (and street names). Many of the same buildings. Even a few folks I adored from the area playing major roles in the novel (but of course with names changed).
If you live around there or are in the area and want to spend an amusing afternoon, here's the gig on people in the book—if you like someone in this book, there's about a twenty-five percent chance he or she is based at least loosely on someone I once knew in the area; seventy-five percent of the good folks are purely imaginary. All of the bad guys are imaginary. I have a firm rule; I don't put anyone I don't like into a book. Why immortalize people you can't stand when there are so many you can walking around? And there you have it. Do a walking tour of Gibson, figure out which of the great old houses is Lauren's, which building is the sheriff's station, and guess who a few of the heroes are based on. And tell 'em I said hey; it's a fine little town.
And as a final note, because I caused my biologist friend Sarah Jane Elliott to beat her head against the wall over this one point: Lemmings do not commit mass suicide by jumping off cliffs. This legend apparently got started when a couple of photographers stampeded a few in order to get some interesting footage. However, Lauren Dane doesn't know this, and thereby may be forgiven for her erroneous metaphor in a moment of extreme stress. You, however, now know better (and so do I), so we have no excuses.
With the hope, then, that you've had as much fun reading this book as I had writing it.
Holly Lisle
April 4, 2001
Eos Spotlight
Interview with a Dragon
One accepts the invitation of a monster cautiously, and with a backup plan if possible. I have no backup plan.
The rrôn faces me, smiling, and says, "I've been looking forward to this chat."
"Why?" I ask. The question the mouse asks the owl, and the rrôn laughs, but does not give me an answer.
Unnerved, I fall back on my questions, scrawled on an index card.
Where did the rrôn come from?
Rrakille. My homeworld hung a hundred worlds upworld of yours, wonderful beyond words. All the races of the rrôn filled it, spread from mountains to jungle to desert. We built great cities and hunting preserves; we sang at night from the clifftops and the city spires; we created art and science and literature and magic. We lived, we loved, we hunted…and then the old gods came, caught up in terrible battles they brought with them from worlds above ours.
In a day our shining home died, taking with it most of my kind, most of the warring old gods who used it as a battlefield, and all the joy the rrôn knew.
You fit many of our myths about dragons—are your people the truth behind our myths?
Of course. We are the dragons, bright and dark, from human tales and the tales carried from upworld. Your world lay in our path. We fled downworld ahead of destruction. Some of us stayed, some moved on. Eventually most of us moved on, when it became clear that Earth sat on the edge of annihilation. A few still remain, of course. A few always stay until the last.
There are still dra—ah, rrôn on Earth? Where are they now?
[The rrôn smiles, cocks one eye-rille, says nothing. I ask my next question.]
What do you and the other rrôn want?
We want our world back. There is no Diaspora more hellish than the scattering of a handful of survivors from their dead planet. We cannot hope to return; we hold in memory all that exists of the joy and the beauty that once belonged to us. And memory fades. Especially for the dark gods, memory is ever a traitor.
And yet, there are rumors. A plan—tried once before—now resurrected, to revive the dead upworlds and stabilize the chain. We're…looking into those rumors. If things go well, I suspect the rrôn will be very busy for a while.
What are the rumors?
Secret. They pass only among the trusted, to those who know how to keep from telling secrets to the enemy. The rrôn want to stop the deaths of worlds—but not everyone shares our sentiments. There are names not even we mention, for fear of summoning evils too great to bear.
[Things that scare the rrôn? I switch topics.]
Are the rrôn obsessed with gold?
Obsessed? No. But precious metals have purpose in the hands of those who know how to use them. Copper shields
against magic. Silver channels the magic of order. And gold…
[He smiles at me.]
Gold channels the magic of chaos. The more gold you hoard, the more discord you bring to yourself. Not a good thing if you don't know about the effect. If you do, though, you can summon tremendous power through a mound of the stuff.
That would mean that gold is…bad.
Gold is chaotic. It stirs things up. That isn't necessarily bad—but gold can be used to create truly evil things. [He grins at me, and reaches forward, one talon extended, and I'm sure our interview is about to be cut short in the worst way, but then something glints. A little ring. Silver. Intricate wirework, no stone.] Here's a parting gift. It holds a little magic of its own—it offers a bit of protection, to warn you about the approach of those forces that live by chaos. And it will remind you what's important while you're writing.
Why? What is important?
That you get our story right. Remember—we're watching. We know where you live. And not all of us have moved on.
* * *
Then, with an agile twist, he launches himself into the air—the wind from the downbeat of his wing knocks me over. When I get off the ground, he's gone, and all that remains is the rapidly diminishing thunder of his wings.
And a gleaming circle of silver in the palm of my hand.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to:
Russ Galen, for spot-on worldbuilding critiques and for pointing out what was really good about the initial concept, and for helping me strip away what wasn't;
Bob Billing, for gracious assistance in researching British beer;
The readers of the Sneak Peeks board at http://hollylisle.com for comments and queries about the first several chapters of the first draft, which helped point me in the best direction for the rest of the book;
Sarah Jane Elliott, Jim Mills, Beth Adele Long, Doug Dandridge, Chris Hughes, Jennifer St. Clair, Ron Brown, Teresa Hopper, Lazette Gifford, and Sheila (S.L.) Viehl, for reading and commenting on the finished first draft;
And for my family, who are my first readers and my assistants, excellent critics and wonderful companions…and who love me even when I am unlovable, which is a real plus.
About the Author
HOLLY LISLE is the author of more than twenty books, including Memory of Fire and The Wreck of Heaven (Books One and Two of The World Gates), the Secret Texts trilogy, and novels co-written with bestselling authors Mercedes Lackey and Marion Zimmer Bradley.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
MEMORY OF FIRE. Copyright © 2007 by Holly Lisle. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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